Many recognize the importance of having a good education especially going through college. Apart from the degree, it opens up your perspective to a whole vast world of academia.

For adults who still don't have a college degree, they have the opportunity to go back to school and get one through programs like Tennessee Reconnect that give free community college tuition.

But the problem that many face is more than just the financial. Being an adult, it won't be easy to balance work, family, studies, and life in general.

This causes Volunteer State Community College's retention rates to decline as many who enroll are forced to drop out because other things take greater priority.

That has been true of 31-year-old Megen Roberts, at least this time around. She first tried college four years ago, but one of her children, who has special needs, fell ill. Roberts dropped out.

But a few years later, she had a revelatory moment that pushed her to try again.

"I seriously was at work one day, and I just looked up, and everyone around me was really stressed, and everyone around me looked pretty miserable," she says, "and I decided, 'Yeah, I'm going to go back to college.' "

(Image credit: Yifan Wu/NPR)

It has been 27 years since the then-Nabisco introduced SnackWell's, a low-fat cookie which were advertised as healthier because of the lower fat content. It became a craze and soon it sold out shelves in supermarkets.

It continued growing until the mid-90s when its sales started to decline. What people neglected to consider was that though they were labeled 'low-fat', they still had the same amount of calories.

Sure enough, in the midst of the low-fat craze, obesity levels in the United States climbed dramatically and have continued to do so. “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” asked the New York Times Magazine in 2002, exploring the then-recent revival of the high fat, low carbohydrate Atkins diet and the fact that the advice to eat as little fat as possible had been overly simplistic and counterproductive.

Today, after Nabisco was bought by Mondelez International, they sold SnackWell's to Back To Nature who reformulated and repackaged it.

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Netflix will be debuting a new documentary feature that shows the various wonders of earth and nature, as well as the effects that human activities have done, degrading it over time causing everyone to suffer.

Far from a harangue, it also exudes giddy amazement at the ingenuity of animals, and nature: their clever strategies for finding food, their synergistic lifecycles, and their resilience in the face of newfound threats. In that regard, Our Planet is jaw-dropping at virtually every turn.

Produced by the same team who made the BBC's Planet Earth, "Our Planet" both revels at nature's beauty and pleads to protect and preserve the planet. Otherwise, everything we see in this documentary will soon just be relics from bygone times.

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With the growing threat of global warming, we all need to think about our carbon footprint. Else, oceans will get warmer, water levels will continue to rise, and weather patterns will become more unpredictable.

But what is the best way to curb our carbon consumption? Economists say that putting a tax on it might be the practical solution.

Of course, slapping a tax on anything would cause prices to soar so in the face of an anticipated clamor from consumers, they suggest to make it revenue-neutral and include rebates and dividends.

In effect, a carbon dividend is like a stimulus check that’s good for the environment to boot. A study funded by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby suggests that by putting more money into people’s pockets, carbon dividends in the U.S. would boost the health care, retail, and service industries and produce more than 2 million jobs within 10 years.

Perhaps the biggest question is whether the American public will go for it. Recent surveys by the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and Yale show support for rebating a carbon tax to citizens, at rates of 49 percent, 62 percent, and 58 percent, respectively.

Notably, the first two surveys show even greater support for directing carbon tax revenue to renewables. But dividends and renewable investments aren’t mutually exclusive. After all, the whole point behind a fee and dividend policy is to spur alternative energies.

Will consumers bite? And what will be the reaction of both the left and right? These are things that we cannot avoid but here's to hoping that we can reach a compromise for the future of our world.

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If pigs can fly, so says the expression but what about an elephant that can fly? One of Disney's beloved stories and characters is one filled with inspiration for all.

Dumbo is widely known for his massive ears that enable him to fly. The very things people ridiculed him for were what made him special. It's something that anyone of us can relate to.

But for a bit of reality check, Cassidy Ward of Syfy takes a closer look at how such feat would actually work if we were to make it happen. How big would Dumbo's ears need to be to make him fly?

(Image credit: Disney/IMDb)

There are certain memories we would rather forget. Embarrassing moments, traumatic events, or conflicts with other people that caused you stress are just some of them.

Previous research on intentional forgetting say that one should divert attention away from these memories.

But a new research would like to add that there is a moderate level of attention that would help us to forget certain experiences and memories.

Memories are not static. They are dynamic constructions of the brain that regularly get updated, modified, and reorganized through experience. The brain is constantly remembering and forgetting information—and much of this happens automatically during sleep.

“A moderate level of brain activity is critical to this forgetting mechanism. Too strong, and it will strengthen the memory; too weak, and you won’t modify it,” says lead author Tracy Wang, a psychology postdoctoral fellow.

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It might seem like a novel concept and in fact, The Shed may very well be the first of its kind. But its foundation is grounded on something that is more low tech than high tech.

The convertible system draws from the world of industrial machinery and shipping yards, which is where most moving architecture of this size exists.

Kinetic elements have been applied to experimental buildings, sometimes responding to daylight or floating with rising tides. Modular interiors, meanwhile, have been used to save space in shoebox apartments.

Architectural design has become more dynamic as it moves toward the future with ergonomic elements, ecofriendly additions, and various other physical features that contribute both to a building's aesthetics and structural integrity.

We might simply be stepping on the verge of what the future will look like as regards to urban development.

And we might soon see more smart designs that strike the balance between stylish and practical without encroaching on the environment and society as a whole.

(Image credit: Diller Scofidio + Renfro/Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists have recently discovered the world's tallest known tropical trees and flowering plants in the Danum Valley Conservation Area in Sabah, Malaysia. They are the yellow meranti, standing at 100.8 meters (330.7 feet).

Unding Jami, an arborist and research assistant with the Southeast Asia Rainforest Research Partnership, had the daunting task of climbing and measuring the tree, something he was well acquainted with by that point.

National Geographic interviewed Jami about his experiences as an arborist and what it was like to climb trees that pierce the sky, what challenges he faces trekking to the summit, and how it feels to be on top. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Ultimate Tourism Travel Blog)

One of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites and the biggest coral reef ecosystem in the world, the Great Barrier Reef houses a diverse range of wildlife. But it has recently been battered by subsequent bleaching events in 2016 and 2017.

Researchers have recorded the number of fledgling corals that have sprung from the aftermath of the coral bleaching and they have grim news about their prospects.

Overall, there was a dramatic drop in recruits in 2018, with numbers dropping an average of 89 percent (the southernmost portion of the reef, which was not bleached much, actually had a bumper crop).

If the corals are given time and space to breathe and reproduce, then they might recover. However, another bleaching event might put the coral reef ecosystem in danger of being wiped out.

And as it stands, our oceans are getting warmer. Scientists cannot say that there won't be another bleaching event happening any time soon.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Everyone just wants to fit in but it's hard to do when you don't look average. Though tall people are usually looked up to, literally and figuratively, it's different when you are head and shoulders above everyone else.

Nicholas Kulish had a difficult time settling into his identity as a tall person. At 6 feet 8 inches, he clearly stands out in a crowd, when all he wants is to blend in.

I was constantly embarrassed of my elbows, my knees and my big feet sticking out everywhere. I hit my head a lot on low doorframes... I don’t think I was very happy in those days. My body and my identity hadn’t yet fused. But in my defense, my height wasn’t something that I had in common with any close relatives or friends.

Studies have shown that being tall is generally perceived in a positive light. Tall people earn more and live healthier. But that actually declines the taller you get.

But for men, many of those same studies explain that the benefits taper off in the upper reaches of height: longevity gains reverse themselves starting at 6 foot 2 inches, earnings stop increasing at 6 foot 6 inches. From there, every inch takes you further from attractive and deeper into a realm of the freakish, toward human spectacle.

Further in the essay, Kulish recounts how he tried to navigate his way in life being as tall as he is and how it would be best to surround yourself with people who understand and who can help you come to terms with who you are.

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Apple just recently released its new 3-minute ad that features almost every product that Apple has in its catalog, including its pizza box. Mark Sullivan from Fast Company lists the different scenes in the ad that made him laugh here.

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Two things in life we can never escape, death and taxes. But perhaps for the latter, some are audited more than others.

In a new study published in Tax Notes, authored by Kim Bloomquist, he made a chart that shows which counties in the US are being audited most by the IRS.

The study found that Humphreys Country, Mississippi, a rural county in the Delta was the most heavily audited county in America.

In a baffling twist of logic, the intense IRS focus on Humphreys County is actually because so many of its taxpayers are poor. More than half of the county’s taxpayers claim the earned income tax credit, a program designed to help boost low-income workers out of poverty.

The study estimates that Humphreys, with a median annual household income of just $26,000, is audited at a rate 51 percent higher than Loudoun County, Virginia, which boasts a median income of $130,000, the highest in the country.

Conversely, Bloomquist also looked into which counties are audited least. And he found that these tend to be areas which mostly consist of middle income, largely white populations such as New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The gender wage gap is slowly inching to a close but it may be too slow in comparison to the rapid growth of the tech industry which now constitutes the biggest slice in the economy.

April 2, is meant to symbolize how much longer a woman would have to work into the new year to make the same as a man did last year. That’s an extra three months.

Pay inequality transcends most industries, but the situation is particularly critical in the case of tech.

Though there is nothing new about this, it might be interesting to note that the wage gap could potentially hurt tech companies in the long run.

Women are more likely than men — 32 percent versus 24 percent of the time — to start looking for new work when they learn of a pay discrepancy, according to a survey by Hired.

That means it will be harder to retain women at US tech companies, which are already struggling to find enough talent.

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Scientists have discovered that one protein is linked to different diseases including depression, obesity, and chronic pain.

Called the FK506-binding protein 51 or FKBP51 for short, not only is it connected to the diseases mentioned above but it could also have applications for diabetes, alcoholism, and brain cancer.

"The FKBP51 protein plays an important role in depression, obesity, diabetes and chronic pain states," says Felix Hausch, Ph.D., the project's principal investigator.

"We developed the first highly potent, highly selective FKBP51 inhibitor, called SAFit2, which is now being tested in mice. Inhibition of FKBP51 could thus be a new therapeutic option to treat all of these conditions."

(Image credit: geralt/Pixabay)

Exoplanets are space objects that orbit a star outside the solar system. Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered by NASA and now they are trying to look through this catalog to see if a habitable planet exists apart from Earth.

This is part of the mission of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, commonly known as TESS. Last week a team of astronomers from Cornell, Lehigh University and Vanderbilt University published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters identifying a detailed catalog named “TESS Habitable Zone Star Catalog,” of 1,822 potential stars where Earth-like planets could exist and TESS could detect.

(Image credit: NASA)